Guaranteed number one ranking is a farce. If you don’t know that by now, its time to learn.
A caveat: I write this post out of frustration. I’m struggling to understand why Google does what it does with its rankings. As an online marketing specialist here at Groove, I spend a ton of time reading about SEO best practices straight from Google, and from other trusted sources. So when I see Groove Commerce go from the 5th overall rank on a highly targeted term, to completely unranked, back to number 5, and completely unranked again over the last week, I have to wonder what it is that we’re doing wrong.
Groove Commerce is a lead generation and eCommerce website design, development, and marketing firm. When we launch a site, we’d like to have our name credited in the footer. Most everyone does this, and usually in a similar format. For us, we like to say “eCommerce Website Design by Groove Commerce”, with a link on eCommerce Website Design leading to our services page of the same name, and a link from Groove Commerce to our homepage. We chose eCommerce website design as our anchor text because its a good snippet defining our services, and a high traffic phrase. From time to time we alter the phrase a bit, to diversify our backlink anchor text. Additionally, we’re a relatively new-ish company, so there aren’t hundreds of sites out there linking back to us with the same anchor text (considered not a good idea).
Over the last few months our rankings on the phrase have improved. As stated earlier, we’ve been as high as number 5, and trending upward. But something we’re doing is making Google unhappy. As of this posting, we simply don’t rank for the phrase. Not on the first page, not on the 100th page, nowhere.
Complete removal from the SERPs is often a sign that Google has caught on to your black hat techniques. The problem is that we do not engage in black hat techniques. We don’t even engage in gray hat! We run a responsible link building campaign; gaining relevant back links with varying anchor text through various sources at a moderate pace. You won’t find links to Groove on completely unrelated sites, disreputable sites, or meaningless directories. So why the Google “slap”?
I’ll never get an answer. In fact, come tomorrow, we’ll probably be back in the SERPs for our preferred term, and maybe we’ll stay there. Maybe we won’t. The point is that the SERPs are a volatile place. Google’s ever changing algorithm, different data centers, personalized results, geo-targeted results, and so many other factors can cause your site to appear and disappear. Guaranteed rankings are a risky business to be in for this reason. Someone guaranteeing you first page rankings may just be able to get you that ranking with the latest method of tricking Google into thinking your site is important. However, the quicker they get you there, the quicker you’ll fall off.
EDIT: Wouldn’t you know it? We’re back on the first page.
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